So far in my life I've had three nicknames (at least ones people called me to my face). Each nickname, however personally loved or loathed, made me feel a very special belonging to a group, gang, or team - a feeling I spent my youth and early adulthood always searching for. A family of my choosing perhaps.

I got one nickname in my first ten years, one in my twenties, and one in my thirties. 

In sixth grade Little League Baseball I can't even remember who the other "Jeff" was. But the second time through the line-up for batting practice, coach Dave Howe became tepidly annoyed at the confusion of the same name twice on the roster while I was up at bat. 

From the pitchers mound, with an omnipresent Marlboro Red resting between his lips, both hands occupied with multiple baseballs, coach says, "Wait... yer Jeff too? No, no, no. Uhh... let's call you JR". 

"Halllright" I said, just wanting to get back to batting practice.

My name - the fucking "G" and "O" my parents thought would be so clever in replacing the "J" in Jeff with - had me correcting and respelling (and RE-spelling and RE-pronouncing) my name for as long as I could remember. Any talk having to do with my name always made me bristle.

I had always hoped for some kind of cool nickname, and after immediately affirming acceptance of this one, only as an after thought did I mildly protest that my initials weren't actually JR. But Dave Howe brushed this obstacle aside as no hurdle at all. From then on, at baseball practice at least, I was JR. 

Dave was the coolest dad I had ever met. He listened to cool music. He drove a pretty cool car that had AC. He had a super cool house on Lake Serene, and even in sixth grade I knew his wife was a total fox. And though Dave was certainly a good bit younger than my dad, his foxy wife seemed like she may have been closer to my age than his. That smell of Old Spice and cigarettes - which I still come across now and again - always brings on an olfactory born respect and fatherly admiration for whomever it emanates from. 

Dave Howe's son Joe was on the team as well. During the season, we became best friends. We went to different grade schools and then middle schools. I somehow felt that made us more worldly and better rounded than other kids. 

I loved Joe's life. I KNEW he had it made the first time I spent the night at his OTHER house - his mom's. His mom, Lynn, was also young, also a heavy smoker, and also the coolest mom I had ever met. She was pretty and laid back, and had obviously done a great job raising my best friend. While he had more freedom to come and go as he pleased at any and all hours of the day or night, Joe was never out running wild. At his mom's house, there was ESPN and Showtime. This was before everyone had cable, and before everyone had HBO.

Lynn would always go to bed while we were still up watching movies, or playing Intelevision, and if we had wanted to "sneak" out of the house, it would have only entailed walking out the always-open garage door. 

Joe introduced me to his mom as JR, along with the story of how it wasn't my initials. For the rest of my life, and to this day, I would be called JR by Joe's whole family. 

One night while Joe, his mom, and I were sitting around watching hockey on ESPN a rogue voice broke though the play by play announcers commentary.

"SUCK MY COCK SANDY!!!!"

My head spun to look at Joe, making sure he'd heard it too, and then both our heads almost toppled off when we made eye contact with his mom. She looked, not entirely amused, as if she was sure I had said it. It took us a few comical minutes to convince her someone must have broken into a spare sound booth and stepped in front of a live microphone, but eventually we all had a good laugh about it. 

Joe's sister Julie was the first person I ever new that was into Madonna and Duran Duran and the Go-Gos. While there was certainly the typical brother/sister animosity thing at work in the first few years after I embedded myself into Joe and his sister's family, her musical tastes and her hot Duranimal waver chick friends made her (however reluctant) an ally and an attribute to our ever blossoming interest in the opposite sex. 

I have a couple friends I have known longer than Joe that I am still in touch with. Somehow, after all the growing and stretching and pruning that life will inflict on friends and family, Joe and I have ended up in the same crowd with a lot of mutual friends and interests. He is the manager and part owner of The Sunset Tavern in Ballard, and if you peek behind the bar, above the wall closest to the door, there is a picture of he and I circa 1979 in front of Lynn's old house (she has since retired to Whidbey Island). We're playing basketball. The only thing more amusing than both of our feathered hair-do's (his is far superior to mine) is the giant word across the chest of his t-shirt. "TEQUILA"

This past Mother's Day, I took my son to Emerald Downs. The last time I had been to a horse track it was Long Acres with Joe and his mom, some twenty years prior.  The Mother's Day trip to the track is something of a tradition for Joe, Julie and Lynn. Julie got a hold of me and they didn't tell their mom I was coming.

"Hey!! It's JR!"

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.

It was just like going home.